We’re trying an experiment. Among his many accomplishments, Joe Nalven is the co-curator of the Digital Art Guild’s Traveling Show “Homage” and the co-author (along with J.D. Jarvis) of "Going Digital: The Practice and Vision of Digital Artists," Thompson Course Technology. I was “introduced” to Joe (via email) by Max Eternity of Art Digital Magazine a few months ago and we’ve corresponded a bit. I invited Joe to write a guest blog. Joe proposed that we each write an essay about the concept of creativity. Joe would publish his on my site and then I would publish my piece on the Digital Art Guild Site. Well, Joe has done his part nicely, as you’ll see below. Now the ball’s in my court. I plan to write my half of our informal collaboration later in the week and I’ll let you know when it’s published.

“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.” -Claude Monet

The Puzzle

I was bothered when listening to famed anthropologist Margaret Mead saying 'you are not a real anthropologist until you do your second fieldwork.' Having just completed my first fieldwork, I was annoyed that I needed something more to become real. I've since learned the wisdom of her remark: there is a point at which less ego means more objectivity (as a social scientist).

The question is whether this is true for artists. Probably not in the same way. Artists are generally not looking for more objectivity, but for a more pronounced definition of their personal vision. The second series of images; the second solo exhibit; the second symphony; these further explorations reveal the artists quest for an engaging way of capturing the human condition.

Here are my recent adventures in the quest to capture the human condition.

A Travelogue of Mind and Spirit

I traveled to Europe this past spring. I was aware that I was but one of many tourists in that moment and in those places. Just think of how many other tourists went to Venice and Budapest! Why would my images be any better than theirs? That would be unlikely. But if one is creative, there are other ways to impose a meaningful vision: the viewer can look upon the image and say, "Aha. That is a Monet. That is a Van Gogh." So, if a viewer were to say "That is a Nalven," what exactly would be meant?

It would mean, for example, that these images are not simply travel photographs. They are intended to strike the gong, calling the viewer to pay attention. When I walked over the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, hearing the story about prisoners taking a last look at the beauty of Venice before entering their cells, I thought about these last looks we have all the time, at every moment of our waking lives. We think about what we just saw, but the image has disappeared. I decided to frame my image making as a much broader concern than these Venetian prisoners — as if we are all walking over a bridge and taking last looks at the beauty and wonder of life and trying to remember what those moments were. We may not be able to describe those images in words, but the image is nevertheless compelling.

Here is one of those images that emerged out of photography and Photoshop -- The Color of Reality.

The Color of Reality

2 Cameras

I used two cameras on this trip as I had been doing for the past several years. One camera was the usual camera that we use — one that relied on visible light; the other camera was converted to take only digital infrared images. Two parts of the light spectrum; two different starting points. Neither was better than the other; these two different image captures were there to tell me that there was always a fork in the road in how to look at any given place in any given moment.

Outside of Venice is the island community of Burano. While the community is famed for its lace, I was attracted to the buildings' stunning color. I soon became lost in trapping different configurations of shape and color. In this image, the street address was unimportant; the building itself was unimportant. My selection was focused on the rhythm of shapes and how these were filled in with color.

The Visible Light Camera / Burano, Italy

The Infrared Light Camera / Budapest, Hungary

In Budapest, I had gotten up early before the rest of the family and I went out to explore the early morning. I became interested in the train station and the people waiting. My interest took in the perspective of how people strung themselves out (don't we all do that?) and how they would approach the train. The sense of object location (train, people, trees, telephone pole, the river, the low wall) and what would happen once the train arrived all fed into my looking into the lens and seeing what I might trap. Here, I decided to use my infrared camera and leave the settings for a RAW image rather than in the programmed mode where the image would appear in blue/cyan rather than red tones.

Photoshop

There is little illusion today that the images captured by a camera are really the way things look. All the more so when one sees the flash card emerge from the camera and being stuck into a computer, reading all those 0s and 1s with some black box algorithm to reinstate the memory. That is important to remember in freeing oneself to transform the "original" photograph into a personal vision, whether tending towards photorealism or towards a more painterly effect. These are all illusions. Best to make them compelling rather than holding on to a literal sense of "that is what I actually saw."

Internal Image Adjustments

Whether the image is with a visible light camera or an infrared one, the image calls for a series of decisions — to leave it as it is or to change it in some way. Photoshop is my image editing program of choice.

In the Burano wall image, I decided to focus on ramping on the brightness and saturation of the color. In the Budapest train station image, I decide to convert the reddish toned image to a black and white one. The drama of the moment called for more contrast, sharpness and removal of the noise in the sky and the halo effect around the various lines objects (telephone pole, wires, train, tree leaves).

To the untutored, the why's and how's of image editing are a mystery and perhaps sloughed off as "it is just the computer." To those experienced in the techniques of a particular software program, the decisions to craft an image in one way or another are informed ones — in the same way that artists crafted images over the centuries and millennia.

Juxtaposition versus Collage/Montage

What could I have done? In the several thousand photos that I took, several called out to me. Whatever that was, I no longer remember. Still, there was a further decision. Do I impose these images one atop the other and blend them together to create a montage? Do I slice and dice the images to create a collage, a rearrangement of the elements from these images to create a new combination? That was one set of directions that I could follow.

In this current series of images, titled Visual Sighs, I decided to arrange a number of them as juxtapositions. In this juxtaposition, we find two different color spectra — infrared converted to a black and white (but with the weirdness of what were really green tree leaves becoming white and other such changes that are less noticeable) against a dramatic chroma image; two different uses of perspective, two different uses and distances of line and shape. I cannot pinpoint exactly what it is but the cropping and placement of these two images seem to resonate. I've had several interesting conversations with viewers coming by at its exhibition.

And, yes, I do not have all the answers of why this particular arrangement makes sense. Maybe I do not fully understand what it is to be a "Joe Nalven."

Many Other Adventures

Being an artist in digital media provides me with the excitement that I might have had with a chisel or a paintbrush had I lived in a different moment. Yes, I could still pick up a chisel or a paintbrush, or I could listen to a symphony or an opera; but I am a rock 'n roll R&B jazzy electronica kind of guy. One needs to go with the flow in which one finds oneself. Each of us can be true to ourselves and still, surprising as it may be, make compelling art.